A lot of very qualified young people are unemployed in Europe. For Crossing Borders this is the biggest problem of today as we risk a whole generation of well educated youth never get the chance to enter into the labor market. The issues that we addressed through this project are the following: -Youth unemployment in Europe -Lack of opportunities for capacity development for new graduates Our objectives for applying were to receive European volunteers for the following reasons: - Promotion inter-European collaboration and understanding through exchange. - Creating valuable work experience for an EVS volunteer, helped them develop valuable skills, that will be of help as they begin their working lives. - Capacity development in Crossing Borders as the volunteers added a great value to the organisation with their different experiences and perspectives. We selected 2 volunteers with different backgrounds. One of them had experience with communications and social media. As CB is in the process of re-formulating its communication strategy, she got an insight into how we rebuild our strategy step by step and she was also a part of this change. She also got an insight into project management. The other one has been a teacher and he is very interested in nonformal education. As we run an international class in a Folk High School (which is based on non-formal educational methods) and we organize workshops in schools, we introduced him to nonformal education, from preparation to coordination to the development and production of educational materials. The role of the EVS volunteers in Crossing Borders was to bring new perspectives to the organization, to assist, generate ideas and help organize international courses and seminars, local workshops, campaigns and events that generated understanding and desire for improvement in the local youth. The volunteers worked in the CB office in Humlebaek coordinated by Crossing Borders, the host organization. They worked on different activities in the planned 12 months. The activities included the following: Communication: design and production of PR materials for our different events, activities and projects; assisting the re-making of the communication strategy (updating the website, the facebook page). These activities ran throughout the whole year. The activities involved mentoring by the director and by the communications coordinator, whom the volunteer worked with. Workshop: planning and implementation of school workshops for high school students in schools in the Municipality of Fredensborg. The workshops are non-formal, interactive and cover various topics such as the BRICS countries, refugees, climate change. The director of Crossing Borders is a teacher for a Global Studies class in Krogerup Hojskole, near the office, therefore the volunteers had the opportunity to get an insight into non-formal teaching in an international environment. The topics of the course at Krogerup Hojskole are similar to the school workshop themes, therefore the volunteer were able to practice skills and methods that he encountered in the Hojskole classes. Crossing Borders strategy for 2015 was to run workshops frequently, on a weekly basis, throughout the year. Event making: the volunteers assisted with smaller and bigger events, workshops and conferences. We organized a conference for teachers on the role of Islam in Arab Society, we held a Global Day for high school students and we also organized public debates on current global issues. At the event-making the 2 activities mentioned above are combined: the Communications volunteer assisted with the preparation (e.g. PR materials, invitations, publications) and the workshop assistant helped facilitate these events. These activities aimed to help the European youth to develop strong organizational skills, clear view point on cross-cutting global issues, active participation and motivation for overcoming the obstacles in personal and professional life and for assisting the development processes on local and international level. We provided the volunteers with ongoing mentoring; we assigned them a mentor who was not a staff member at Crossing Borders, and we also appointed a staff member as responsible for each activity; to help the volunteer overcome challenges, to improve and to give feedback. Our aim was to assist the volunteers to acquire and improve their skills so that their EVS placement was a valuable experience in both their personal and professional life. Spending 12 months at an organization enabled the volunteers to learn, take initiative and develop, and these are a positive factor in their future job-seeking process.